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Young Anna knows only hardship and utter poverty, while she’s living in an orphanage with several other children. Their only meals are tasteless gruel. One day, when she’s taking out the toilet bucket to a dump, a mysterious voice tells her to look for “the sprinkles.” She wanders off to the river and is swept by its current far away. She is saved by Nika and Abram, a young couple who live in a castle with riches the like of which Anna has never known. She comes to love the couple, who give her a large bag of sprinkles to put on the gruel of all the kids in the orphanage. The kids learn a lesson when the sprinkles run out that life is not so bad, if they just look at it positively. In the end, Nika and Abram decide to buy the orphanage and adopt all the children.
This is a charming short story aimed at small children about how one can come out of any hardship in life if they have the right outlook. The story starts out strong and is well written with some minor inconsistencies throughout and has a strong religious slant within the narrative. The premise and the idea lends itself to a longer story, one that could have been developed into a full-length children’s middle grade reader. The author’s voice and writing style are readable and relatable, and so is the character, Anna, as she overcomes the hurdles that are placed in her path. This is a good book for young children and parents to read together.